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Thursday, 16 June 2016

Am I a parent or a child? - dancing with a toddler

Arthur dancing on my feet

Every now and then in life we have those moments when we don't know whether we feel more like a child or a parent.This was one of those moments...Looking down at this tiny human, standing on my feet and dancing - laughing and swaying whilst walking my footsteps. Am I really at that stage of my life where I am paving the path (literally in this case) for another little person? Where they will look up to me, physically and metaphorically, watching and waiting to see what I will do next so that they can follow?It doesn't seem two minutes ago that it was me standing on my grandad's feet as he tried to teach me to dance, and if he were here now I'm pretty sure I wouldn't feel too old to have that dance again. I remember being that child and I still feel how I felt then - especially in this moment.At what point in our lives do we cross that line from being a child to being an adult? Is it really as simple as turning 18? Is it absolutely finalised once we have our own child? Or can we spend our whole life being both - choosing appropriate moments for each?Suddenly I found myself asking all these questions, reminiscing about my own childhood and those carefree days - all triggered by my little toddler dancing on my feet in the same way I used to.... And then I saw this...Arthur dancing with a baby doll on his own feet ... And I realised - the difference between me as an adult and me as a child: I find these moments and I start to look back at who I was...Children use these moments to look ahead at who they can be. That, right there, is the answer.

12 comments:

I know exactly what you mean. Sometimes I forget how old I am and I still feel like I am in my early 20s!

It's very true what you say though, parents reminisce about their childhood and children certainly do look ahead. My eldest is desperate to grow older and be a big boy whereas I just want him to stop growing!

Thank you for linking up to #KCACOLS and I hope to see you back again next week.

That's so funny you wrote this, I was literally having this conversation with my husband the other day about when do we cross the line from childhood to adulthood, because I really feel like my childhood never ended, I'm such a big kid haha! xx#twinklytuesday

Letting out my inner child is something I look forward to on a daily basis! Being able to play cars, race around the house and be superheroes, it's so great to be involved with their imagination. Although I feel like he is growing at an ever speedy pace, I wish he was little forever and we could hide in blanket forts eating ice cream for dinner!